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I AM KING
Hello. My name is King. I am a police “Sniffer” dog. I’m a pure-bred “Alsatian.” I say "Alsatian" because, as an American in the service of our country and municipality, I resent the connotations of, “German Shepherd.” It carries a whiff of World War Two, of armbands and leather-jacketed thugs, barbed-wire, search lights, interrogations, reprisals, and…
BACK TO THE SIMPLE LIFE
4pm Sunday I see Karl August standing beneath the towering oak outside his house on Pilgrim Street, looking thoughtfully at his new door. Turning up the cement approach to his porch, I must admit the new door looks like wood. Old, dry wood. We stand on the portico and Karl tries it a few times.…
JUST BACK IN TOWN
I wrote this on the plane back. It was Inspired by my seat neighbor, who popped three or four Ambien about three hours ago. A largish man in Bermudas, singlet and flip-flops, he snores with what could be described as symphonic relish. The highs remind one of the whine of leaf-blower; the troughs of his…
THE RAILING
He squeezed the railing tightly, the better to keep from launching himself over it and into the night below. She had said that thing that couldn’t be unsaid. Described him in a quite novel way, said that she had overlooked it out of love for him, that he was disgusting, a unique pig, a never-to-be-healed sore…
QUARANTINE ISLAND
“You ain’t going anywhere, today. We ain’t.” “Why’s that?” “There’s no flights going to New York.” “Newark, then?” “Nix, man. No place. No where. No York, No Newark. No Wark. No… Body.” I shifted to the other desk. “What about you?” Still no. I ventured over to HeronAir. “You guys going?” “No can do, Sir.…
The New Janissaries
We get the word from the Turkish, Yenicheri, meaning “New Soldiers.” The Ottoman custom was to kidnap boys or to take them as tribute from the vassal lands of the Christian Balkans, to force them to convert to Islam, and to make of them the Sultan’s soldiers-elite, his guardians, until they rose high enough and…
WHEN JUMBO JETS VACATION, PART ii
NOTE: This updates an earlier, eerily prescient post ("When Jumbo Jets Vacation") concerning the disappearance of MH-370. It's posted somewhere below. UPDATE 24 JULY Multiply an astronomically large number times one of cosmologic scale. Got it? Now, take that highly zero-laden number and multiply it by all the hours in geological history. Got that? Now, cube that result…
WEB GUIDE
~~My name’s Dannikin and I’m your authorized U.S. Cyberguide.~~You’ll keep off that website, please. Yeah, that’s probably not for you.~~~You’re free to go there, if you choose. I wouldn’t advise it.~~~~~Don’t try to adjust the volume. Even if you do, you can only turn me down, not off.~~The name, “Dannikin”? Simple. I like Star Wars…
THE GREAT RAID OF 1978
The close-watched boys of Haverhill Prep expressed their adolescent sexual energy and frustration towards the cloistered girls of Haverhill Prep in the traditional way, with the Panty Raid. And even this venerable tradition, begun when the boys school merged with the girls school some ten years before would soon disappear. The separation of boy and girl fading,…